Sometimes the curious mind could lead us in the direction of wanting to take a photo without being seen doing so. Thanks to developer, Itay Brenner, we can now do just that with the help of a jailbreak tweak called SpyPhoto. It lets you take a photo without triggering any noises, flash, or even needing to have the Camera app open. What you do is you set an activator action to activate the tweak, and after you invoke the activator action, the iDevice will take a photo. All during this time, no one will ever know that you took a photo because there was no shutter sound, no flash, and no camera on your screen.

I've been playing around with this tweak for a few hours now and it's fun to use. You can take a picture of your friend in the middle of something embarrassing without having to hold your phone up and making it look obvious that you're taking a photo of them. You can make this tweak work with both the front-facing camera and the rear-facing camera so that means that you can set a separate activator action for each. This way you can invoke the correct one that you need at the time that you need it. What's the best part about that? SpyPhoto user says, "haha, hey Steve, look what I just got a photo of you doing!" Steve says, "Oh my god, delete it!" Priceless. One thing that I have noticed is that invoking the tweak in rapid succession can cause a springboard crash. So take photos only at a normal speed and you will be fine (wait at least two seconds before taking another one).

Taking a look at the settings window, you can see that there are options to configure both the front-facing camera and the rear-facing camera. You can pick your own activator action for each of them. Also, you can choose to have the iPhone ask you before it takes a photo (in case you invoke it by mistake), or you can even have it tell you when it does take a photo and it will bring up a popup that tells you it took one. I like to leave both of those settings off so that it isn't ever obvious that you took a photo. Here is the settings window:

The only way you will be able to tell that it's working is when you invoke SpyPhoto, you will see the loading circle in the top left of your status bar. The one that usually appears when you are loading some kind of data over Wi-Fi or 3G/Edge:

I was able to talk to Itay via email to ask some questions about the tweak:

Anthony: What exactly does SpyPhoto do?Itay: It allows you to take picture without making any sound or having to open the Camera app.

Anthony: What gave you the idea to make SpyPhoto?Itay: Well, I know that lot of people use the camera of this device to take pictures without being detected but the camera shutter makes that very difficult. So I made it better without camera shutter and without having to open the Camera app.

Anthony: What was the hardest part about making SpyPhoto?Itay: The hardest part was to make the app not to make any sound. I had tried first turning the volume down and then back to the original value, but it didn't work. I had to approach that with a different way which seems to work much better now.

Anthony: Is SpyPhoto fully compatible with iOS 5?Itay: Yes, it is compatible with iOS 5 and also with iOS 4. I haven't tested with iOS 3, but I think that it doesn't work because of the frameworks that are only on iOS 4 and above.

Itay was generous enough to offer to giveaway FIFTEEN copies of SpyPhoto to the wonderful Modmyi readers!

Here's how to win:

Follow me @BouchardAnthony
Follow ModMyi @modmyi
Retweet this article with your Cydia number in the tweet; if you do not have the Cydia number in your tweet, you will be disqualified from the drawing. Within the tweet you must also mention @BouchardAnthony so that I can easily see who has entered the drawing. If you don't mention me, you will also be disqualified. The tweet must include the following text, "I entered a contest to win SpyPhoto for iPhone!"

Winners will be announced on Wednesday, November 23. Good luck to all of you!